As anybody who has ever been a fan of any sports will tell you, heated debates over the merits and demerits of one's favourite players are an intrinsic part of following the sport. The debates centre around a lot of things, but the crux of several arguments is a "my guy has better numbers than your guy" line.

Having done a Most Valuable Player analysis after last year's IPL [Link], it seemed only logical to go one better this year, and tweak the formulas involved to produce a more comprehensive analysis this time around. After all, everything about IPL-3 has been bigger than IPL-2 - the crowds in the stadiums, the noise, the number of advertisement breaks, and the off-field drama.

Thus here is the analysis of IPL-3's Most Valuable Player.

Just as equations off the field in the corridors of the BCCI have gotten more complex and unfathomable, so I found this year, my equations for calculating the Batting and Bowling indexes for players getting more complex. There was one key difference though: I did not foresee any problem in actually explaining my equations.

Let us start with the batting. Batting, by its nature lends itself to greater manipulation by numbers because there exists a proportional relationship in the numbers one measures and the performances associated with them. Thus the more runs you score or the higher your strike rate - the better you have performed.

Amongst the simplest ways of measuring a Batting Index for players is to simply multiply the runs scored by the strike-rate. While this satisfies the basic criteria that one must account for while measuring a Batting Index in a limited overs game - runs scored and the speed with which runs are scored - it is a little too simple, and offers potential for tweaking.

The Batting Index for this rating, is calculated not by taking strike-rates into account, but taking relative strike-rates. The relative strike-rate of a batsman is simply his strike-rate divided by the tournament's average strike-rate. Thus if the tournament's average strike-rate has been 100, and Batsman A scores his runs at a strike-rate of 120, his relative strike-rate will be 1.2. If Batsman B scores his runs at a strike-rate of 90, his relative strike-rate will be 0.90.

When one uses relative strike-rates, it is easier to see batsmen who have scored at above-par rates getting benefited, while those who have been slow get penalized. However, in a Twenty20 format, the strike-rate is an extremely important measurement criterion and needs to be given added weightage. A score of 25 off 15 balls can often swing a match towards the team, while a score of 40 off 38 balls, while being numerically superior, will not help the team as much.

While increasing the weightage of the strike-rate, due care must be exercised so that rewards and penalties are automatically in-built into whatever formula is used, so that a Keiron Pollard who has scored at much above the normal scoring rates gets doubly benefited, but a Jacques Kallis who has scored at much below the normal scoring rate gets doubly penalized. The way to do this is by using the square of the relative strike-rate.

Go back to the example earlier of Batsmen A and B. Their relative strike-rates were 1.2 and 0.9. The square of their relative strike-rates will thus be 1.44 and 0.81. In one stroke, the man who has scored faster than par, gets a higher coefficient (1.44), while the man who has scored runs slower, gets a lower coefficient (0.81).

Thus the number of runs a batsman has scored will be multiplied by the square of the relative strike rate.

The only problem with squaring relative strike-rates is that it reduces the importance of runs scored very drastically. Therefore a new factor is added to the mix: the relative average. Multiplying still further by the relative average rewards the batsmen who have been consistent, since scoring runs is the basic unit of measurement that batsmen must excel at.

For the purposes of calculating the relative average, each Not Out for a batsman was considered as adding 10 runs to his total. The figure of 10 is a rounded one, arrived at after studying when the batsmen remained not out, and how often they did so.

The complete formula for calculating the number of points a batsman has got is thus:

Runs Scored * Relative Average * Relative Strike Rate squared.

For IPL-3, the tournament strike rate has been 126.76, while the tournament average (after accounting for Not Outs as mentioned above) has been 21.29.

It will, of course, come as no surprise to people to see who tops the list of batsmen in IPL-3, but it is still interesting to see who the other men are who make up the list of top batsmen. For the purpose of brevity, only the top-20 batsmen are shown in the list below:

Rank

Player

Team

Runs

Balls

Strike Rate

Batting Points

1

Sachin Tendulkar

Mumbai

618

466

132.62

1351.30

2

Suresh Raina

Chennai

520

364

142.86

1105.07

3

Murali Vijay

Chennai

458

292

156.85

1049.53

4

Mahela Jayawardene

Punjab

439

298

147.32

1004.66

5

Robin Uthappa

Bangalore

374

218

171.56

905.52

6

Jacques Kallis

Bangalore

572

494

115.79

857.42

7

Sourav Ganguly

Kolkata

493

419

117.66

716.77

8

Virender Sehwag

Delhi

356

218

163.30

705.65

9

Chris Gayle

Kolkata

292

184

158.70

697.40

10

Yusuf Pathan

Rajasthan

333

201

165.67

673.62

11

Saurabh Tiwary

Mumbai

419

309

135.60

644.05

12

Kumar Sangakkara

Punjab

357

257

138.91

599.04

13

Kevin Pietersen

Bangalore

236

157

150.32

592.31

14

Kieron Pollard

Mumbai

273

147

185.71

576.00

15

Ambati Rayudu

Mumbai

356

246

144.72

569.72

16

Rohit Sharma

Deccan

404

302

133.77

560.02

17

Andrew Symonds

Deccan

429

341

125.81

556.95

18

Naman Ojha

Rajasthan

377

285

132.28

546.80

19

Shane Watson

Rajasthan

185

114

162.28

526.91

20

David Warner

Delhi

282

191

147.64

476.98

It is instructive to note that even though Jacques Kallis has been the second highest scorer in the IPL, his batting rank is 6. Robin Uthappa, who has scored nearly 200 runs less than Kallis has pipped him because of his fantastic strike-rate. The achievements of Shane Watson and Kevin Pietersen in making the list are also note-worthy, since they both had far fewer inning to play than the others, and had they batted more, would have ended up probably near the top of the table.

That's how the batsmen have performed in IPL-3. Part-2 of the piece will deal with the bowlers, while Part-3 will incorporate fielding points for the overall ranking for the IPL's Most Valuable Player.